Kasie Webb, nursing student at Southern Union Community College, called for her missing dog while some of her classmates writhed on the ground in pain as emergency responders tended to their wounds.
It was all by design, however, as part of East Alabama Medical Center’s disaster drill Tuesday morning.
The drill, which takes place twice a year, is conducted to prepare first responders and other medical staff for disasters like tornadoes, chemical spills or in this case, a bus crash.
Director of Emergency services at EAMC Sharon Gess said the drill is to ensure the hospital and their personnel are always in a prepared state.
“It’s extremely important, especially how we serve the community and the major universities around us,” Gess said. “We are the main hospital for Lee County.”
The drill started early Tuesday morning when 21 nursing students from Southern Union Community College arrived at the EAMC Education Center. They were told what injury they were going to portray in the simulated bus accident and sat down to have their makeup designed to look like wounds.
The injuries the students supposedly sustained ranged from burns and missing digits to even impalement by a stick. The makeup applied portrayed the injuries in detail.
“It makes it more real for our first responders,” Howell said.
Chris Reed, Southern Union faculty member, directed the students on their roles. Some were told to be unresponsive, some to act belligerent and some to remain in constant signs of pain, only breaking character with a safe word if something was wrong.
“They see it from the patient side, so they appreciate it more if there ever was an actual disaster,” Reed said. “We want them to keep it realistic but have fun with it.”
The students pretending to be injured arranged themselves in the crashed bus simulation in the parking lot of the education center and waited for emergency personnel to arrive.
The Community Emergency Response Team arrived first on the scene and started assessing victims and their levels of injury. Mary Sinnott, member of CERT who works on the University’s campus, has been part of the drill for a few years now and explained that CERT is always the first response to a disaster like this.
“We assist first responders by keeping people away from the incident,” Sinnott said. “There’s a CERT Team on campus, each building has some personnel. We have to be on site if something were to happen”
Soon after CERT came, members of the Opelika Police and Fire departments, as well as first responders from EAMC, arrived with ambulances.
Some victims were treated and taken to the hospital in order of severity, while some personnel had to deal with other victims’ screaming and asking for help.
A makeshift reception area in the ambulance bay of EAMC had nurses, emergency physicians and registration/admission desks.
Victims were taken to the area and registered for hospital admission, all while other personnel in the Instant Command Center of EAMC decided where the patients went, kept a timeline of disaster events and positioned hospital units to deal with the new patients.
“Not being prepared is not an option,” said Randy Causey, director of support services at EAMC.
Causey said the drills are vital to making sure EAMC is ready in an event like the simulated one in the drill.
“If one is not important and 10 is very important, [being prepared] is about a 12,” Causey said.
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